Page 72 of When Love Found Us
That part is news to me. I blink, processing. “I had no idea he started doing that after I arrived,” I admit. “But I didn’t ask to be brought here either. You think my life was easy?” My voice drops, my fists tightening at my sides. “This town saw me as his bastard. The outcast. Poor Therese—everyone pitied her for taking me in. You four were brutal. And our father? He couldn’t even look at me because I reminded him of my mother.”
Hopper exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. “It couldn’t have been easy for you.” His gaze meets mine. “And yet, sometimes you tried to divert his attention so he wouldn’t come after us at night.”
I shrug. It doesn’t matter now.
Ledger stays quiet. That anger simmering just beneath his skin hasn’t gone away, but something shifts.
“Listen,” Hopper continues, turning to Ledger, “I get it. You’ve got shit you haven’t worked through. Maybe you should bring it up to your therapist because this grudge you have against him is not healthy. If you choose to just keep it and be bitter, that’s your problem. However, I need you to understand something—Atlas is important to Nysa, to Maddy, to me. We want to have a relationship with him, and with his wife.” His voice grows firmer, there’s some kind of warning or . . . I’m not sure what it is, but he says, “Our parents fucked us up. That’s not a secret. But we don’t have to keep being like them. I don’t want to have to split holidays because we can’t grow the fuck up.”
Ledger exhales through his nose, his fingers flexing at his sides. His gaze flicks to me, then back to Hopper. “I don’t know how to stop hating him.”
Hopper levels him with a look. “Then start by trying.”
Silence stretches between us. Then, finally, Ledger nods once. “I’ll try,” he mutters, like the words cost him something.
I want to tell him not to bother, but I don’t. Hopper has changed a lot, and if anything, he deserves my silence. If this comes up again and Blythe or Hop aren’t around, I might beat the shit out of Ledger to teach him a lesson. And maybe I need to start therapy, too, because I know I haven’t worked through my resentment either.
Is it worth trying, though?
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Henrietta (Blythe)
The drive back is quiet,even tense. The tension isn’t between us but the result of what happened with his brothers.
Atlas keeps one hand on the wheel, the other resting over mine, his fingers tracing slow, absentminded circles against my skin. It feels like some kind of reassurance. It’s like he’s convincing himself—or me—that everything is fine. That, or maybe he’s just working through the tension still gripping his body, the fragments of a family dinner that never stood a chance of ending well.
The glow from the dashboard cuts through the dark, tracing the angles of his face, highlighting the tension in his jaw and the crease in his brow that hasn’t eased since we pulled away from his brothers’ house.
Atlas hasn’t said a word. Neither have I.
Dinner was . . . awkward. The conversations never settled. If this had taken place during the old days where I could pretend everything was always fine, I could’ve been the life of the party. Now . . . I don’t think I have changed much from that woman who just did what was expected from her, but I can’t be her, either. If anything, this reunion showed me that I’m pretty lost when it comes to knowing myself. How am I supposed to fix that?
It’s probably a problem for another day.
Malerick arrived right as the other three brothers got out of the office. I’m not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He seems broodier and angrier than the other brothers. There’s one thing I can say about the Timberbridge men. They have similar features, but all of them carry their own brand of broody—some stormy and intense, others smoldering with an edge that never quite fades.
Surprisingly, Malerick is the one who kept the conversation going for most of the night. He ran through the latest town gossip, Delilah correcting him every time he veered off course because her sources are better than his. By sources, we mean the patrons who visit her coffee shop. A place with great acoustics and where everyone likes to talk about . . . well, everyone.
During the meal, Ledger still looked at Atlas like he’s the outsider. Like nothing Atlas has done, nothing he’s built has been enough to belong to them. Anything he does will never be enough to carve a space into the family.
I don’t know if either one will be able to erase the exchange they had during dinner. I have the feeling the hate they have for their father is what blinds their common sense. They’re similar in a way they probably haven’t noticed. Neither one of them wants to be their father and both of them see their father in each other. Isn’t that ironic?
They’re probably still afraid. Not that someone is going to come and beat them up the way their father did, but that they’ll grow up to be him. I know Atlas has spent his whole life fighting not to be like his father. Every decision he makes, every time he steps back instead of lashing out, every single moment of restraint is proof of that.
I should tell him.
I should tell him that men like Winston—like my father—don’t sit in silence after a night like this, gripping the wheel like they’re holding themselves together. Men like that don’t worry about becoming monsters. They simply are and revel in it. They don’t care what they might become. They don’t think about it at all. They take. They destroy. And they sleep just fine.
Atlas is nothing like them.
I should tell him that. I should say something. Anything.
But the words stay locked in my throat.
Instead, I watch the way his fingers flex on the wheel, the way his shoulders stay rigid. I should be thinking about myself, about my own safety, about how to keep my distance because this—this thing between us—whatever it is, it’s getting dangerous.
Not because he’s a threat.
